Lonely Planet, the world’s leading travel media company, announced the launch of Trips by Lonely Planet, a self-publishing content platform offering travelers an enjoyable, easy way to discover and share their experiences.

Trips enables anyone to seamlessly upload photos and videos directly from their phone’s photo library and craft stories illustrating each trip. The platform’s simple and modern design features the ability to “like” trips, follow others, save favorite stories to one’s profile and discover new trips by location or theme, such as wildlife and nature, adventure travel and road trips. In addition, Lonely Planet’s team of expert writers and editors frequently curates top recommendations to inspire people’s next trip.

Leveraging its expansive and reliable travel expertise, Lonely Planet developed a highly immersive mobile platform designed to help adventurous spirits instantly navigate a wealth of curated travel content with an expert lens. The app is now available for free on iOS and will be available on Android later this year.

“At Lonely Planet, we are proud of our long history of offering the world’s best travel content in a variety of ways,” said Daniel Houghton, CEO of Lonely Planet.“ We understand what the modern traveler wants and have delivered an interactive digital platform that offers an effortless, mobile-first way to document, share and discover remarkable experiences.”

Trips: Interactive app offers a reimagined way to discover and create travel content

A recent Skift report indicates that 63 percent of consumers look to social channels before booking a vacation. Lonely Planet envisioned a way to leverage its robust catalogue of independent travel content to create a standalone platform that meets the expectations of socially connected travelers. As people continue turn to social media first for recommendations, Trips provides access to the best shared travel experiences anytime, anywhere.

“I have been waiting for a platform that gives me the formatting options and tools I need to accurately express my travel experiences. Trips helps me do this and is now my go-to app for creating high quality content on the move,” said Ed Norton, Lonely Planet contributor and professional photographer.

“I recommend searching the Discover section, which is a great place to find inspiration as well as themes and ideas for your own stories. Plus, published stories on Trips may be chosen by Lonely Planet’s destination experts as featured posts, which is perfect for increasing views of a person’s unforgettable travels.”

For over 44 years, Lonely Planet has been the leading independent travel content provider. Founded as a guidebook publisher, the company pioneered bringing travel content online by launching as one of the first travel websites. Today, Trips joins a series of digital innovations from Lonely Planet, including a new video platform launched in April (lonelyplanet.com/video), the redesign of LonelyPlanet.com and the Guides app (lonelyplanet.com/guides).